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Its weird I came away not really knowing what to think aside from the fact that there were whole chunks that seemed irrelevant to the story. I didnt dislike it, but nor could I honestly say I enjoyed it.

Very minor spoiler warning from me. But honestly its based on a book that came out years and years ago, so deal with it

I've read the book once, but apparently remember little of it since there were whole chunks and characters that I have no memory of; hell, the only reason I assured myself that Ashok wasn't entirely made up like that orc in the first one was because I remember him from Zangband rather than the book.

Having had a chance to give it some more thought today I think my issue was that it seemed too familiar and too formulaic. I mean clearly the source material is rather old and so may well be responsible for a lot of the conventions that now seem all too familiar but in terms of just the film it seems like a big tick list of things you'd want in a great film...but somehow comes up lacking.

To take some of the action set pieces as an example - they were phenomenal; in terms of choreography and cgi work they were exceptional, particularly when you consider they've got real actors interacting with CGI creatures, its pretty mind blowing and yet...there's something not quite there. I just didn't garner the same excitement from them as I did the LotR films. Maybe its just I'm getting older/grumpier, I dunno, but you have two fight sequences that are almost perfect parallels to the first LotR film

1) you have the 3 trolls in the hobbit against the cave troll fight in FotR.
At the time the FotR fight was amazing to me, it was the kind of fantasy fight I'd only ever dreamed of, it did a great job of following the different characters, assigning them their own styles and had a solid focal point in terms of the troll itself while maintaining a sense of urgency by throwing all the cave orcs/goblins (whatever they were) in to the mix.

The fight in the Hobbit is outstanding in terms of the amount of stuff going on but seemed to lack a focus and maybe its because you've ostensibly just got dwaves fighting - nipping at the trolls - that it doesn't have the same wow factor the FotR fight had - a fight that was swiftly followed by the awesome reveal of the balrog, which remains one of my single favourite monster designs ever.

2) The fight with the goblin king in the Hobbit mirrors (in terms of position in the film) the fight where Boromir dies in FotR. That fight was again outstanding, giving each character a chance to demonstrate their stuff and ending on the poignant note of Boromir's redemption and then death.

The Hobbit's fight with the Goblin king has some weirdly comical bits along with some unwieldy exposition about "oh look they're killing me with such and such sword" and then has lots of fancy CGI long shots with them running inter-spliced with fancy action shots but doesn't dwell long enough on anything to allow you to appreciate it.

I suspect a lot of it stems from the lack of characterisation of the dwarves, for all intents and purposes there are 3 main goodie characters - Bilbo, Gandalf and a bunch of interchangeable dwarves - although one of them is slightly gruffer cos y'know he's the leader and carries a heavy burden or somesuch.

Other things that bugged me
- Numerous irrelevant scenes, specifically: everything with the Brown wizard, the stone giant fight and a few others
- The fairly jarring comedy of some scenes against what is effectively the story about the genocide of an entire people, their abandonment by their allies and then their greed filled lust for gold - rather than a determination to simply retake their home
- Fucking eagles man, seriously - the dicks of the LotR universe. Could've solved so many issues if they'd just pitch in from the word go.

I'm sure there was some other stuff but I can't think of it right now

TLDR: Technically impressive, Emotionally: meh.
Will watch next part but wouldn't call myself excited.
Also long. So so long

Also, I just rewatched Madagascar 3 and saw Ted for the first time today

Ted was surprisingly amusing but adds further evidence to the fact that Seth Macfarlane is a one trick pony in terms of characters/jokes etc, so if you're already weary of family guy in particular, then you won't like this.

Saw Madagascar 3 on the plane back from Canada so didnt really get to appreciate all the visual gags they throw in. Thoroughly enjoyed it again although not enough Mort for my liking!

Maybe I'm just well outside their standard advertising audience but it feels like since the noise around the first one they've quietly been getting on with producing 2 outstanding comedies without getting as much praise as perhaps they deserve. Certainly if I could only take one trilogy with me to a desert island then I think it would have to be this *awaits disapproving glances/comments*

1) you have the 3 trolls in the hobbit against the cave troll fight in FotR.
At the time the FotR fight was amazing to me, it was the kind of fantasy fight I'd only ever dreamed of, it did a great job of following the different characters, assigning them their own styles and had a solid focal point in terms of the troll itself while maintaining a sense of urgency by throwing all the cave orcs/goblins (whatever they were) in to the mix.

The fight in the Hobbit is outstanding in terms of the amount of stuff going on but seemed to lack a focus and maybe its because you've ostensibly just got dwaves fighting - nipping at the trolls - that it doesn't have the same wow factor the FotR fight had - a fight that was swiftly followed by the awesome reveal of the balrog, which remains one of my single favourite monster designs ever.

Spoilers Ahoy

Gotta say that fight in The Hobbit was amazing. I can see why you say there is no focal point, but man just having a dozen dwarves and 3 trolls bouncing all over the screen hacking at each other was amazing. It's the kind of sequence you could watch 10 times and focus on a different part of the screen and see something new. Not sure I'd say I prefer it to the Moria tomb fight, but the choreography was just amazing.

Overally I think I agree with your general thoughts. Emotionally the Fellowship was better, you actually care about the characters and what they are going through. In The Hobbit they try this and it falls a bit flat. The whole 'Bilbo showing he is valuable' speech is a bit silly, maybe that would have worked better if they let Bilbo save the group from the trolls instead of Gandalf stealing the thunder. Instead they had Bilbo try and save Thorin at the end, which was a bit stupid given he didn't actually prolong his imminent death by about 5 seconds. What I did like is that it was more fun and more cheerful. I loved the interaction between the dwarfs - "do they have chips?". And generally not being told that the world is going to end and the Dark Lord is coming and OH GOD EVERTHING IS GOING TO SHIT, like throughout LotR.

And yeh, those eagles. What do they do during their 364 days off? Because they sure as hell better have a damn good excuse.

The deus ex machina is annoying in The Hobbit and to a lesser extent in LOTR.
Gandalf saving the day in the troll scene is an iconic moment, although it's pretty dumb.

Jackson and his team face a huge challenge in adapting these stories. Imagine the fan rage if Bilbo saved the day. Or if Aragorn fought Sauron, as planned and shot for ROTK before they inserted a troll. Or if Arwen was present at Helm's Deep. I don't want changes like this.

On the other hand LOTR improved some aspects of the book. I like how they worked around the character of Glorfindel. I don't mind the elves at Helm's Deep. I thought The Scouring of the Shire was bullshit so Saruman's death was improved.

I heard Legolas and the girl from Lost handle the Mirkwood spiders part. I really hope that won't happen because it's a character defining moment for Bilbo. On the other hand Jackson may come up with a more entertaining scene that just works despite missing the point.
You know how in TTT the Nazgul almost grabs the Ring in Osgiliath? And then Frodo continues the journey and Sauron doesn't give a shit. It's a very stupid scene - the whole point of Frodo's stealth journey is that Sauron thinks the Ring will be taken to Minas Tirith. And now we're supposed to believe the bad guys see it in Osgiliath, almost halfway between Minas Tirith and Mordor, and do nothing about it. It's a fantastic scene but it really doesn't make any sense.

You know how in TTT the Nazgul almost grabs the Ring in Osgiliath? And then Frodo continues the journey and Sauron doesn't give a shit. It's a very stupid scene - the whole point of Frodo's stealth journey is that Sauron thinks the Ring will be taken to Minas Tirith. And now we're supposed to believe the bad guys see it in Osgiliath, almost halfway between Minas Tirith and Mordor, and do nothing about it. It's a fantastic scene but it really doesn't make any sense.

Yeh that is kinda dumb. I always thought that part of the story was a bit silly anyway. I mean the ring is supposed to literally be a part of Sauron right? So surely he would feel the ring getting closer and closer. But I guess some suspension of disbelief is necessary. :p

Gotta say that fight in The Hobbit was amazing. I can see why you say there is no focal point, but man just having a dozen dwarves and 3 trolls bouncing all over the screen hacking at each other was amazing. It's the kind of sequence you could watch 10 times and focus on a different part of the screen and see something new. Not sure I'd say I prefer it to the Moria tomb fight, but the choreography was just amazing.

Yeah, that's a good point. It would be really interesting to re watch and analyse all the crazy stuff going on.

The thing is I normally really love layered stuff like that, so that when you rewatch something there's loads of extra's you didn't notice previously. I guess my issue with this was I didn't get sufficient enjoyment from the first watch to justify just how much was going on. All I could really marvel at was how amazing well it was put together - I was probably just over-thinking it ;)

Originally Posted by duff

The whole 'Bilbo showing he is valuable' speech is a bit silly, maybe that would have worked better if they let Bilbo save the group from the trolls instead of Gandalf stealing the thunder. Instead they had Bilbo try and save Thorin at the end, which was a bit stupid given he didn't actually prolong his imminent death by about 5 seconds.

Oh god, that speech, yeah that annoyed me. It was just so obvious that I found myself murmering Thorin's 2nd part before he said it. I agree they either needed to make Bilbo's contribution more significant or simply avoid the (not very) mislead and have him say, "Well done mate, you've really proved yourself today"

Originally Posted by duff

What I did like is that it was more fun and more cheerful. I loved the interaction between the dwarfs - "do they have chips?". And generally not being told that the world is going to end and the Dark Lord is coming and OH GOD EVERTHING IS GOING TO SHIT, like throughout LotR.

Definitely the whole Frodo / Sam storyline of the 2nd two films really started to grate, but must admit I didn't see it as that much more cheerful, if anything I found a weird disconnect between the comedy bits and the other bits about "oh, no help is coming", "Its just us", "you're going to fail".

If it had been more "Jolly good luck lads, bring me back some gold" then maybe it would have worked better for me

Also I found the 'dumb' dwarf intensely annoying for some reason. Plus his makeup seemed wonky, as did a couple of the other dwarves

Originally Posted by SirKicksalot

The deus ex machina is annoying in The Hobbit and to a lesser extent in LOTR.
Gandalf saving the day in the troll scene is an iconic moment, although it's pretty dumb.

Out of interest, was that how it happened in the book? From memory I thought it was just the playing for time and then it kinda happened.

Originally Posted by SirKicksalot

Jackson and his team face a huge challenge in adapting these stories. Imagine the fan rage if Bilbo saved the day. Or if Aragorn fought Sauron, as planned and shot for ROTK before they inserted a troll. Or if Arwen was present at Helm's Deep. I don't want changes like this.

On the other hand LOTR improved some aspects of the book. I like how they worked around the character of Glorfindel. I don't mind the elves at Helm's Deep. I thought The Scouring of the Shire was bullshit so Saruman's death was improved.

Actually that's one thing that surprised me, because I thought they did a fantastic job of adapting the other books and trimming the fat / reworking characters, but with the hobbit it felt a whole lot weaker - particularly with regard to some of the incredibly irrelevant scenes that didn't really add anything to the story as a whole.

Originally Posted by SirKicksalot

You know how in TTT the Nazgul almost grabs the Ring in Osgiliath? And then Frodo continues the journey and Sauron doesn't give a shit. It's a very stupid scene - the whole point of Frodo's stealth journey is that Sauron thinks the Ring will be taken to Minas Tirith. And now we're supposed to believe the bad guys see it in Osgiliath, almost halfway between Minas Tirith and Mordor, and do nothing about it. It's a fantastic scene but it really doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, good point. Although the ring has always been the ultimate macguffin so confess I never really questioned that kind of stuff.

Oh god, that speech, yeah that annoyed me. It was just so obvious that I found myself murmering Thorin's 2nd part before he said it. I agree they either needed to make Bilbo's contribution more significant or simply avoid the (not very) mislead and have him say, "Well done mate, you've really proved yourself today"

Yeh exactly. I guess thats the problem with having 3 films: each one has to have an arc, hence the big bromance cuddle at the end.

I'm guessing in the next part Bilbo will burn Thorin's breakfast, but then he'll secretly plait his beard for him during the night and all will be forgiven.

It seems i may be forced to watch in 3d. The options here seem to be normal 3d, or HFR 3d, or 2d in japanese. (which is odd because that mean the subtitled versions are in 3d and that doesn't work so well. )

I don't really fancy paying extra to have to wear 3d glasses for 3 hours. sigh.

It seems i may be forced to watch in 3d. The options here seem to be normal 3d, or HFR 3d, or 2d in japanese. (which is odd because that mean the subtitled versions are in 3d and that doesn't work so well. )

I don't really fancy paying extra to have to wear 3d glasses for 3 hours. sigh.

You should let us know if 48fps solves that little "3D causes splitting migraines" problem.

Watched Stake Land last night. It's not the most original movie concept: orphaned youth is rescued by vampire hunter and learns to survive in a post-apocalyptic America but the characters were interesting and the world they inhabited was convincing and agreeably hellish.

I quite liked it,on other hand Book Of Eli..not so much. I mentioned it because it was more popular and widely known then Stake Land,but it wasn't any better at all. A blind men who fights like a bruce lee,give me a break pff..